Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!sun-barr!newstop!sun!solntze!livesey From: livesey@solntze.Sun.COM (Jon Livesey) Newsgroups: alt.activism Subject: Re: Akwesasne Notes -- Basic Call to Consciousness 1977 Message-ID: <130492@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Date: 19 Jan 90 21:11:13 GMT References: <1468@milton.acs.washington.edu> Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM Reply-To: livesey@sun.UUCP (Jon Livesey) Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View Lines: 36 In article nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu writes: >In article <1468@milton.acs.washington.edu> aesop@milton.acs.washington.edu (Jeff Boscole) writes: > > >From: nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) > > > If you saw a ten dollar bill lying on the sidewalk, would you pick it up? > > A greedy person would pick it up. A self-interested person would leave it > > there, realizing that it doesn't belong to them, that someone will be > > looking for it, and sooner or later they'll lose something that they will > > want someone else to leave there. > > I dispute this. A "needy" person picks it up. Somebody solving the litter > problem picks it up. Someone respecting the USA picks it up, recyling a > bill so that it won't become defaced. Someone educating another about the > problem of carelessness picks it up. > >Can you say "grasping at straws?" I knew you could. > >The fact remains that everyone who picks the bill up is stealing >someone else's ten dollar bill. A person in "need" does not lose >their sense of ethics. A ten dollar bill is not litter, it will >retain value even if defaced, and punishment is not education. > >Sounds like you want to live in a place where private property left in a public >place becomes someone else's private property. Foo on you. I lived for a few years in Switzerland, where it was quite routine to leave ones bags on the railway station platform while going for a coffee. Each morning, the Journal de Geneve would have a column of pro-forma classifed ads from the Geneva Police, each saying "A wallet containing SfrXXX was found on Bvd. Such-and-So and handed in the the police. To reclaim it, call Police Post YYY". It's a little wierd at first, but you get used to it. jon.